How widespread is the economic downturn across the globe? Well, it’s now affecting many North Koreans, because funds from South Korea that might help them escape their workers’ paradise are not as plentiful as they once were, according to an article in Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun. I’ll quote just the first paragraph from White Peril‘s translation.

The number of dappokusha fleeing from North Korea … has decreased substantially [to] Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province, China, which abuts the PRC-DPRK border. It’s the biggest stronghold of the refugee business, but the activities of the brokers who maneuver behind the scenes guiding refugees through are at a standstill. This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and in addition to a heightened level of alert at the border, the effects of the financial crisis have stopped the money that gets to them from South Korea. However, the defections supported by the brokers are a “necessary evil.” Beyond the border, there’s a backlog of desperate people.

The term dappokusha 脫北者 (lit. ‘escape North person’) caught my attention. The same compound is read 탈북자 in Korean (talbukja in the official SK romanization), but its usage in SK is now discouraged in favor of the euphemistic 새터민 saeteomin, which I’ll translate here as ‘new localites’.

HISTORICAL/COMPARATIVE NOTE: One of the more remarkable regular sound correspondences between Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese is SK *-l and SJ *-t (the latter often -tsu in final position, or assimilated to the following voiceless consonant), as in 出発 : 출발 chulbal : しゅっぱつ shuppatsu (< shutu + hatu) ‘departure’. This sound correspondence is part of what gives Korean its characteristic abundance of rolling liquid sounds and Japanese its characteristic abundance of staccato geminate obstruents amid otherwise open syllables (like Italian).

4 responses to “Wordcatcher Tales: Dappokusha/Talbukja”

The Character in question 脱 is tuo1 (first tone) in Mandarin; however, in some southern dialects it is an entering tone a swallowed tone that is a ‘t’ glottal stop. There were also glottally stopped entering tones that ended in ‘p’ and/or ‘k’. An example of the ‘k’ glottal stop is country 國 which is guo2 (second tone) in Mandarin, but ‘guk’ iMiddle Koreann Korean or ‘koku’ in Japanese. The glottally stopped entering tones become a second syllable in Japanese. The ‘t’ stops in Korean mutated to ‘l’ in Middle Korean, hence Korean ‘tal’ and Japanese ‘tatsu.’

Joel pointed out: “(出发) is [cêd1fad3], with two dental finals, both lost in Mandarin chu1fa1.” 出发 in post-Middle Korean is Chul Bal–with both syllable finals having gone into ‘l’. Whereas in Japanese it is ‘shuppatsu’ where the doubling of the initial ‘p’ of the second syllable is the result of its environment, being preceded by the final ‘tsu’ that represented the ‘t’ glottal stop originally.